Hi there, I’ve been meaning to go get more serious about my data. I have minimal backups, and some stuff is not backed up at all. I’m begging for disaster.

Here’s what I’ve got: 2 8tb drives almost full in universal external enclosures A small formfactor PC as a server, with one 8tb drive connected. An unused raspberry pi. No knowledge of how to properly use zfs.

Here’s what I want: I’ve decided I don’t need raid. I don’t want the extra cost of drives or electricity, and I don’t need uptime. I just need backups. I want to use what drives I have, and an additional 16tb drive I’ll buy.

My thought was that I would replace the 8tb drive with a 16tb one, format it with zfs (primarily to avoid bit rot. I’ll need to learn how to check for this), then back it up across the two 8tb drives as a cold backup. Either as two separate drives somehow? Btrfs volume extension? Or a jbod connected to the raspberry pi, that I leave unplugged except for when it’s time to sync the new data?

Or do you have a similarly cheap solution that’s less janky?

I just want to back up my data, with an amount of rot protection, cheaply.

I understand that it might make sense to invest in something a bit more robust right now, and fill it with drives as needed.

But the thing I keep coming to is the cold backup. How can you keep cold backups over several hard drives, without an entire second server to do the work?

Thanks for listening to my rambling.

  • DigitalDilemma@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    A pet subject of mine.

    Firstly - sit down and consider what you need to backup.

    Tier 1 - unique data. Stuff you created that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Tier 2 - Stuff that would take a few days to repeat. Local configs, etc. Tier 3 - Stuff you can just download again. (Steam library, media etc)

    Don’t backup Tier 3. I’m betting the size of data you need to back up shrinks a lot.

    Secondly - automate it. If there’s anything manual, then you’ll eventually stop doing it. Automate, automate, automate - and throw in some manual or automated checks of the backups to verify they’re actually usable.

    Thirdly - airgap it if you can, and if there’s much Tier 1 data. Offline disks. This gives you some protection against ransomware.

    I wrote quite a long blog on the subject if you’re interested in more.

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.worksOP
      2·
      1 day ago

      Thanks for this! This is a really rundown.

      One question on the media though. While things like games and media can be redownloaded, that’s a significant effort. And also, how do I know what I’ve lost once it’s gone? Do I backup a directory of what I had somehow? I have a terrible memory, and will forget things ever existed.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
    1·
    1 day ago

    Using Linux,i just got an Xtb drive, set it up with btrfs, then with a little bit of scripting that took less than an hour i setup automated daily incremental backups using copy on write method.

    I can see backups on a per day basis for years back now

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
    2·
    1 day ago

    It’s nice to see that people are not just throwing shit to the “cloud”. The “cloud” is just someone else’s disk space and from there, anything can happen.

    No advice here but whatever method you choose, script in a notification that all went well with backups so you know if you need to troubleshoot or not.

    • beastlykings@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      1 day ago

      Thanks! I do have some stuff backed up to Dropbox, but I’m hoping to cancel that before it renews as I don’t use it anymore

  • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    I only buy used drives. The money I save from buying and using them is more than enough to backup everything multiple times. I personally think a new drive but only one back up is not safe.

    Other thought, if you want to be seriously safe about your backup you should put it at your parents house or work in case something happens to yours.

    But the thing I keep coming to is the cold backup. How can you keep cold backups over several hard drives, without an entire second server to do the work?

    You could just plug them into your server or computer and move them there. Also, a server doesn’t need to be expensive. You could just buy a used optiplex for 40$.

    • ayaya@lemdro.idEnglish
      0·
      1 day ago

      Used all the way. I haven’t looked at prices recently but I have gotten 8TB SAS drives for $40 each. Hard to beat that.

    • Galapagon@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 days ago
      1. where are you getting used drives from?
      2. my dad and I both have hypervisors. Any suggestions on how to share backups without a vpn?
      • ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.comEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I originally got my used drives from an electronic recycling company. They were selling them around 3-5$ per TB.

        Then I got a ton of my sysadmin family member.

      • Droolio@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        my dad and I both have hypervisors. Any suggestions on how to share backups without a vpn?

        Just use Tailscale on the devices instead of VPN. Secure and no faffing around with port forwarding.

      • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Why no VPN? It is what the tech is for, making a private Network between places.

        If you are both behind cgnat then you will need a third place to relay through like a dirt cheap VM or VPS.

        • Galapagon@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          2 days ago

          It’d have to be always up, essentially merging our networks. I thought it’d be better to keep them separate for security.

          • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            A VPN doesn’t have to merge networks, you can still keep them as 2 separate broadcast domains. like your house could be 192.168.1.0/24 while your parents could be 192.168.5.0/24

  • Droolio@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    You’re limiting yourself somewhat if you’re not able to plug in multiple drives at the same time. Otherwise, I might suggest mergerfs for basic JBOD. You won’t be able to use a single ZFS to avoid bit rot - only detect it. SnapRAID - ideal for offline setups - would be the next step up if you could dedicate one of your drives to parity.

    In your position, I’d do Duplicacy backups split/spanned over multiple backup drives (however you connect them).

    It has a pretty cool Erasure Coding feature that protects individual chunks from bit rot and possibly even bad sectors, plus the whole database-less architecture makes it very robust. De-duplication, high levels of compress, and encryption. Plus you can keep historic snapshots, so you can avoid the risk of accidentally sync’ing ransomware over the top.

    Edit: the CLI is free for personal use, and is source-available. Written in Go and extremely performant.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 days ago

    I got an external ORICO USB hard drive dock and two 3.5" hard drive cases (also by Orico). Every month or so, I plug them in and rsync files over. I’m lucky that one specific folder is about the size of one drive, so I just manually split them. There’s probably a better way to do that if you don’t have an obvious split.

    Then the 3.5" drives in their colorful cases go into a fireproof safe in the basement. I also added another pair for semiannual backups that go to my inlaws.